Narabedla Ltd

by Frederik Pohl

  “But we can’t go off Narabedla.”

  “Well, only on tours. When somebody’s with us.”

  “But the aliens can go to Earth? Binnda said he’d been there.”

  Conjur shrugged. “Some of them do. The ones that can dress up to look human, anyway. You ask why? I dunno why. Well, they’re all ape-shit to do it, only for all different reasons. There’s the Ggressna, like Binnda, they just want to see what’s coming down. There’s the Mother, who would give her funny-looking little ass to go, only how can she? First she’s sessile—that means she can’t move much herself,” the speech major explained to me, “and second can you imagine what would happen if she turned up on Times Square? There’s the Ossps, and they got bad reasons. Happen they had their way they’d be there right now, you know what I’m saying?”

  I was afraid I did. I felt a little chill on the back of my neck, thinking about what one of those high-tech alien races could do on Earth if it chose to. “And so it’s against the law?”

  “What kind of law are you talking about, man? There’s no law. The Ggressna can’t tell the Ossps what to do, no way. If an Ossp really wanted to go to the Earth nobody could stop him. Only he’d be in trouble, ’cause they’ve all signed the deal that says they won’t interfere. See,” he said, stretching—it was like a lion stretching—“the thing is, they can’t let it be known. Otherwise it costs them. When Binnda goes to like Carnegie Hall he’s living real dangerous. If anybody catches him and it makes the TV news, then he’s in the deep shit. That’s a violation of the Fifteen Peoples agreement, you see what I’m telling you? They come down on him hard. It’d cost him—not just him, but all the Ggressna. So he takes a chance. But if he don’t get caught, why then there’s no problem. He’s got off on what he likes to do, and nobody’s going to complain.”

  “And the Mother lets him go, because he comes back and tells her everything. She likes that,” Tricia put in.

  I remembered the question I had intended to ask Norah Platt. “But I thought the Mothers were the peacekeepers.”

  “Yeah? That’s right, what about it?”

  “But I thought that meant everybody trusted them, you know?”

  “Man,” said Conjur, looking pained, “nobody here trusts nobody. It’s just like they can make you real sorry if you do something you shouldn’t.”

  “And get caught at it,” Tricia added, freshening up our drinks.

  I tried a different tack. “How would they know?” Conjur blinked. “Say what?”

  “How would anybody here know if, for instance, Binnda got caught in Carnegie Hall?”

  “Why, man, that would certainly make it onto the network news, don’t you think? And of course all the radio and TV from Earth is monitored all the time. There’s about a million funnies that keep tabs on everything that’s broadcast from Earth. From all the other planets that they don’t mess into, too.”

  “They’re spying on us?” I cried.

  “Who said spying? I mean, what in the world would they need to spy for? No, they’re just interested. It’s like they’ve got all these researchers, you know? Like people who study Earth customs, and, I don’t know, people in the entertainment business, they pick up the shows and sell them, like. Like movies? Only of course they aren’t movies. Anyway, there’s no way it wouldn’t get known all over if somebody on Earth came across a live Ggressna at the Met, or maybe a Duntidon walking down like State Street. It’d make all the papers, wouldn’t it?” He hesitated. “And that’s not all they’re looking for, Nolly.”

  “Oh?”

  He rocked his head back and forth for a moment. “No,” he said, “there’s worse than that. You know, some of these funnies are not so damn funny. Some of them’s got real nasty attitudes about other species. If some of those birds got onto Earth there’d be bad times.”

  By then we were on the fourth or fifth drink, and I was actually beginning to like the combination of Scotch and ginger ale. We were all three sprawled out on the big, round bed, heads propped on elbows, about as relaxed as I had been since the moment I arrived on Narabedla.

  Naturally something had to come along to spoil it.

  What the spoiler turned out to be was a scratching on the door, and when Conjur let the visitor in it turned out to be one of the Mother’s little bedbugs. It made straight for me. “Dr. Boddadukti is ready for you now,” it piped, nudging me toward the door With its hard, warm little head. “Come! It is time to prepare for your repair.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  In one way, I didn’t really mind the interruption. The party at Conjur Kowalski’s pad had reached the point where I was pretty sure that fairly soon somebody was going to lay somebody, and I didn’t see a role for me in that. So it was time to go.

  In another way I was pretty uptight. Not scared. Tense. The feeling lasted all the while the bedbug led me through the go-box and along a sort of corridor. It wasn’t a street. It even had a roof, and there were closed doors along the sides of it, though there were no furnishings. I didn’t ask questions. It didn’t speak again. Then I began to hear distant sounds of singing, and when the bedbug came to an open door it butted me inside.

  The room inside was almost as bare as the corridors, apart from a bank of skry (I assumed they were skries) monitors that flickered with pretty colored lights on the wall. There, on a pure white, sterile-looking couch, were Purry and Norah Platt. They were not uptight at all. They were amusing themselves by singing “Greensleeves” together. At least Norah was singing, with a surprisingly decent contralto, while Purry was doing a real neat job of a piano and violin accompaniment.

  I hadn’t expected anything like that. It relaxed me considerably. I might even have joined in, except that all I knew was the first verse.

  They stopped considerately to welcome me. “I’m glad to see you so bright, Knollwood,” said Norah fondly, getting up and limping over to pat my cheek. She was using a cane, I saw, and the way she walked suggested that the joints were giving her real trouble again. “One’s first operation is always a worry, don’t you agree? But Dr. Boddadukti is a marvel. So much better than a human bar—a human surgeon. That is, simply in terms of natural equipment.”

  “He’s not human?” I asked. It didn’t seem important, but that fact had simply not registered with me before.

  “Oh, Knollwood, of course he’s not human. Why would they get a human being for something like this? The Duntidons are so much better. Dr. Boddadukti has done me for ages, and I’m so glad he’s finished with his other work so he can get around to our little problems.”

  “Other work?” I started to say, but Purry broke in softly.

  “Dr. Boddadukti is coming now,” he said, and I looked up.

  When I was at Camp Fire Place Lodge I had been lonely and unhappy, but never scared. That is to say, never scared until the time half a dozen of us were out a mile from shore with a counselor and the outboard on our boat quit. I wasn’t scared then, even, until I saw that the counselor was. And I hadn’t been scared here until I saw who Dr. Boddadukti was.

  I could not believe it at first, but, yes, our surgeon, Dr. Boddadukti—the thing that was lumbering into the room, with a pair of the Mother’s little bedbugs skittering beside him and one of the Kekkety servants close behind—the one who was about to perform any number of assorted perforations and incisions and heaven knew what else on me—was someone, only I preferred to think of him as something, I had seen before, and not very long ago at that.

  “How are you, Dr. Boddadukti,” asked Norah politely, and I stood up to confront the creature I had watched only a couple of hours earlier. In Execution Square. With his needle-sharp fangs ripping the arteries out of poor Jerry Harper’s throat. There were still traces of Jerry Harper’s blood on the thing’s razor-sharp claws.

  It may be that Dr. Boddadukti responded to Norah’s cheery greeting. I can’t say. All my attention was taken up in staring at the monster.

  It—well, I suppose I have to say �
�he”—wasted no time. He lumbered over to the far wall, gazed at the Christmasy colored lights of the monitors for a moment in silence. Then he said something. I suppose he said it, though what it sounded like was a combination of clicks and guttural growls. The Kekkety deferentially slipped in beside him and began pushing buttons.

  Soundlessly, a part of the side wall opened up, displaying the entrances to two little cubicles. Between them were more of the screens and what looked like the control panel on a space shuttle. Boddadukti waved a claw at us sternly, and one of the Mother’s bedbugs shrilled, “You are to remove your clothes, you two patients.”

  “Oh, sorry, Dr. Boddadukti,” caroled Norah, sitting down to slip off her shoes. Purry translated into Boddadukti’s clicks and rumbles for her, and Norah twinkled at me. “Come on, Nolly. This is no time to be modest. Off with the trousers, please!”

  I glared at her. That involved my turning to face her, and as I opened my mouth to speak I felt a hard, hot hand— claw? paw?—on my shoulder, and smelled breath still redolent of human blood, and heard right next to my ear the voice of Dr. Boddadukti, rumbling, “Slajbachdajbaj,” or something of the sort, which Purry translated as, “Dr. Boddadukti says that the human female patient Norah Platt has asked him how he is, but the true question, dear humans, is how are you?”

  The Kekkety had pattered over and was busy unbuckling my belt. I pushed at him angrily. He didn’t move. He was, I discovered, a lot heavier and a lot stronger than he looked.

  I pushed him again, with more force this time, and made my stand. “Hold it,” I yelled. “I am not going to get sliced up by some murdering monster with human blood still on his claws!”

  “Nolly!” Norah cried in shock and outrage, stepping out of her bikini underwear—she had, I observed, a pretty nice figure for an elderly woman—elderly! “You mustn’t speak that way about one of our most distinguished alien associates!”

  “Shlazgajbazhmazh,” roared Dr. Boddadukti—

  And Purry out of one set of holes was translating what I said and what Norah said into the clicks and growls of the Duntidon language—and out of another set of holes was relaying to me Dr. Boddadukti’s responses, which went in English: “Dear human friend, you must understand that I was merely carrying out the instructions of your own human court—”

  And I was going on, “This thing is a dangerous animal, and anyway I was kidnapped here in the first place and I want out—”

  And, all in all, that little room was filling with sound, none of it pleasing to me, and I would have left them all behind had I not discovered (limping over to the entrance with the little Oriental-looking Kekkety servant doggedly pulling my pants down around my ankles) that the door wouldn’t open for me.

  I hadn’t seen anyone lock it, but the fact was that it was indeed locked. I was trapped there.

  I turned to them as a Christian might have turned to the lions of the Colosseum. Purry was piping away in one language or another out of all of his holes at once, trying to keep up with me (still shouting) and with Norah (still remonstrating) and with Dr. Boddadukti (still clicking and growling).

  We might have gone on in that way indefinitely if Dr. Boddadukti hadn’t got tired of it. He didn’t seem to lose patience with me. (How could you tell if he had? He didn’t have a proper face.) His clicks and growls did not change in pitch or volume, nor did what he was saying (as relayed by Purry) become anything but the polite remarks of a cultured gentleman of the medical profession. Nothing he did could be construed as threatening, or even annoyed, though while he talked he did fastidiously lick away the little smears of Jerry’s blood I had reminded him were on his claws.

  He simply reached out, as though absentmindedly, and stroked the keypad of the consoles set in the wall.

  From the wall there came a queer, shrill hum to add to all the other, already sufficient, noises in the room, and I began to feel rapidly and irresistibly at peace.

  No, not exactly at peace. I had not forgotten that this being was a killer. I had not stopped being afraid. I simply didn’t mind any of it. Ah-ha, I said wisely to myself, the son of a bitch is doping me. And out loud I said good-naturedly, “Sorry to take so long, Doc. I’ll be out of these clothes in a minute.”

  And so I was.

  The doctor didn’t even look at me again. He was busy watching his monitors, perhaps, though he didn’t seem greatly interested in what they displayed. From time to time he would suck at one of those razor-sharp talons, pulling it through his teeth (oh, of course, I said wisely to myself, sharpening them up for the operations). The act made a rasping, fingernails-on-blackboard sound every time he did it, but that didn’t bother me either. Nothing did. Nothing seemed to be happening, except that every now and then I felt a kind of warmth, once quite hot around my throat and chest, once even hotter in the region of my scrotum, and a sort of generalized, all-over tingling, like standing next to a static electricity generator.

  None of this hurt.

  Nothing hurt, and I did not feel as though I would mind particularly if anything did.

  When it stopped, nothing at all happened for a while, although I had a hazy notion, from watching Norah Platt give an occasional amused twitch or wriggle, that it was her turn to be examined by whatever kind of thing it was that had been examining me. I waited in good-humored patience, and in silence until Dr. Boddadukti said, “Scrajscrajbajgadda,” and Purry translated it as, “He says there is no problem. Now both of you are to get cleaned up for surgery.”

  I bowed deferentially to Norah, and Norah inclined her head graciously to me and led the way. She went into the left-hand cubicle of the two that had appeared on the wall.

  I went into the right. We were both still bare naked, of course. It no longer seemed particularly worth noticing.

  Inside each cubicle was a thing like a cot, and a thing like a king-sized tub, full of greenish, faintly aromatic liquid, and a thing like a stall shower, but without any visible faucets. I thought of stepping into the tub, but the bedbug that had followed me nudged me into the stall.

  It turned out indeed to be a shower, or at least something very like one at first. Needle-sharp sprays of something oily and sweet-smelling shot out at me from all directions as a door closed on me. I ducked involuntarily, but there was nowhere to duck to. I thought of trying to protect my eyes. Then I realized that whatever was coming at me had already found my eyes, but the sprays just there were gentle ones and my eyes didn’t seem to mind it. The sprays didn’t stab. They didn’t sting; and they followed me wherever I moved.

  Then the sprays changed. They became gentler and warmer, and they smelled different—a little like the roses of the Riviera, almost, I thought, wondering amiably if Irene Madigan were still there to smell them.

  The sprays were quite soothing.

  Why, I thought with amusement, I seem to be falling asleep right here.

  I saw the door begin to open, the spray stop, the Kekkety reach in to catch me as I collapsed languidly to the floor; and go to sleep I did, then and there, without any further thought about it at all.

  When I woke up I was thinking about Marlene and Irene Madigan.

  Perhaps I had been dreaming about them, though I remembered no dream. I was lying naked on that little cot, turned on one side with my head pillowed on my arm, and my first waking thought was that Irene and Marlene must be worrying about me.

  My second thought was that I seemed to have a slight sore throat, not to mention a dull ache in the vicinity of my belly and my balls, and my third was that—oh, wow! Wonderful!—the operation must be over!

  I sat up and looked around.

  I was alone in the cubicle with the cot, the bathtub, and the shower stall. The stall was empty. The tub was still filled with liquid, but it seemed thicker and soupier now, and it was gently swirling around in the tub, like a slow-motion Jacuzzi. It smelled different now, too, a sort of combination of ripe cheese and disinfectant.

  “Hello?” I called.

  Nobody answe
red.

  The reason for that was that nobody was there. Not in my cubicle, and not out in the larger room with the pretty colored lights floating around the wall. My clothes weren’t there, either. Naked and tentative I got up and peered around from my doorway, ready to duck back inside and demand pants if someone showed up.

  No one did, and, actually, as I began to move around, the faint aches and worries seemed to ease themselves. I felt no worse than I would normally have felt after a night on a hard cot without a pillow.

  I saw Norah Platt’s cane propped against the tub in her room, but the cot was empty. I peered in, wondering where Norah was. The tub was making the same gentle water-in-motion sound as my own, and then I looked into it.

  The first thing I saw was Norah’s toes, bobbing up to the surface of the smelly tank. Then I saw that the toes were on her foot, which was normal enough, and the foot was at the end of her leg, but the leg was no longer attached to Norah. Both her legs floated in that tank, and so did her body, and so did her head, but none of them were any longer joined to each other.

  Norah Platt had been disassembled.

  By the time the outer door opened again and Sam Shipperton came in, fresh clothes for me over his arm, I was standing by the tub with Norah’s cane raised in my hand. It was a good thing that it was Shipperton that came in first and not Dr. Boddadukti or one of the other weirdos. I would surely have done my best to smash in any nonhuman head that appeared.

  Even so, it was a close thing. He ducked away from the cane in surprise, yelling, “What the hell are you doing, Stennis? Put that thing down!” And then, as I hesitated, “Come on, man! I got no time for this. Get your clothes on; Mr. Davidson-Jones wants to see you right away!”